Ashley Judd is calling for legal action to protect grieving families following the death of her mother, Naomi Judd, on April 30th.
In a guest essay for The New York Times on Wednesday, the actress opened up about how her mother’s death was “the most shattering day of my life.”
“Naomi lost a long battle against an unrelenting foe that in the end was too powerful to be defeated. I could not help her,” she wrote. “I can, however, do something about how she is remembered. And now that I know from bitter experience the pain inflicted on families that have had a loved one die by suicide, I intend to make the subsequent invasion of privacy — the deceased person’s privacy and the family’s privacy — a personal as well as a legal cause.”
“It is now well known that law enforcement personnel should be trained in how to respond to and investigate cases involving trauma, but the men who were present left us feeling stripped of any sensitive boundary, interrogated and, in my case, as if I was a possible suspect in my mother’s suicide,” she shared.
She added that while she wanted to “comfort” her mother as her “life was fading,” she felt it “mandatory” cooperate with law enforcement.
The actress shared a screenshot of the article on Instagram calling for better law enforcement procedures and laws “that would allow suffering families and their deceased loved one more dignity around agonizingly intimate details of their suffering.”
“Autopsies are public record. So are toxicology reports. We have shared our story so openly, to raise awareness, reduce stigma, to help people identify, and make sure we all know we face mental illness together. What more do folks want us to give of our grief?” she shared.
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Editorial credit: s_bukley